


Consistent Lies

by aewriting



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 18:31:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18267017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aewriting/pseuds/aewriting
Summary: Alex reflects on past trauma as he recovers from his combat injury.





	Consistent Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone. Thank you for reading this short story. I just opened an AO3 account specifically to post this - the Michael/Alex pairing has been on my mind so much lately!

“Manes?”

Alex winced as he rose from his chair. These damn crutches. He’d been at Walter Reed for months now, and he knew he should be grateful for how far he’s come (and for being _alive_ ), but it was still so frustrating, learning to live his life without his leg. He knew he was making progress. He’d graduated from hospital gowns to sweats, and he was now living in the transitional unit as opposed to the main hospital. His days were surprisingly full, and he preferred it that way. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and today, finally, psychology.

He made his way to the reception desk and was handed a thick folder.

“Please complete these questionnaires, and the doctor will be with you shortly.”

“Thanks,” Alex said. He carefully made his way back to his seat, gripping the folder with his fingers while still maneuvering the crutches. He sat down with a little more force than he’d intended, and looked around to see if it had attracted any undue attention. Nope. All the other men, and one woman, in the waiting area were either idly watching the television mounted to the opposite wall or filling out their own packets.

_Hello, old friends,_ he thought to himself, flipping through the battery of questionnaires. They were covering all the bases – depression, anxiety, pain, panic attacks, substance use, PTSD… He’d seen most of these before. Now he just had to remember how to answer them.

It was always sort of a joke, thought Alex, asking a bunch of active military personnel to fill out measures about their emotions. Unless someone was _trying_ to get service connected for psych issues, it wasn’t very advantageous to actually be upfront about what was going on. But at the same time, it wasn’t a good idea to completely lie. You just had to tell _consistent_ lies.

Alex’s consistent lies had served him just fine in his past psych evaluations. He was, falsely and consistently, a well-adjusted heterosexual airman with an unremarkable upbringing. The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wasn’t going to officially change that any time soon, especially with the recent administration change, though it had allowed him to at least marginally relax when it came to the occasional hookup. His eyes narrowed. Hookups. Good luck with that, now, Manes. Like it wasn’t hard enough being gay in the military…

He cast a hard look at his half-empty pant leg. Well, maybe he’d be a little more honest this time. It would look weird if he wasn’t, right? “Oh yeah, I was recently attacked in a combat zone and lost half my leg, but I have no complaints, no pain, no changes in my mood!”

He had to come up with a game plan for these measures. He would answer honestly if it was about his leg. He’d keep the other, older lies the same.

Alex clicked his pen and got started. He was glad they’d included the pen with the measures. The last thing he wanted to do right now was make his merry way back up to the desk to get one. The questions were easy enough to begin with. Some lower mood than usual, pain, fatigue… And then he got to the Trauma Checklist.

He remembered this one. Remembered it because it was always the one where he told his biggest lies.

“Below is a list of traumatic events or situations. Please mark YES if you have experienced or witnessed the following events or mark NO if you have not had that experience.”

Instructions were straightforward. The whole questionnaire was, really. What was NOT straightforward was Alex’s response to it.

This should be an easy one, right? Especially now, Alex thought darkly. “Serious accident, fire or explosion.” Um, yes. “Military combat or a war zone.” Yep. But some of the other items… “Non-sexual assault by someone you know (physically attacked/injured).” Way too often. But he wasn’t exactly going to tell the military that.

And then there was the kicker: “Of the questions to which you answered YES, which was the worst?”

Alex had to sit back at that, do a gut check. Since the last time he filled this out, he’d been deployed again. He’d lost half a leg. He was living in a military hospital, for fuck’s sake, with no discharge in sight.

And yet…

He almost laughed a little. It was still that day. It was still that fucking day. Dammit. Alex could feel the heat coming to his face, could feel the old shame and guilt and fear rushing in.

It had started so well. To this day, it was still the most sexually exciting experience of his life. For one perfect afternoon, that dingy toolshed had been a paradise. As much as he tried to block everything out from that day, he still remembers the way the sun had hit Michael’s face, the planes of his body as they’d had sex right in the middle of the shed. It was as if there was live electricity between them, from the first stunning kiss in the museum until…

Don’t go there, Alex chided himself. The elation, the hammer, the attraction, the blood, the safety, the helplessness – it was all hopelessly intertwined in his mind. He swallowed hard. He’d gotten so fucking good at this, at shoving the memories back down, at avoiding anything related to that wonderful, atrocious afternoon. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? The more he muted the horror of it, the more the beauty got muted too. And now, despite almost ten years of travel and service, his world and his future felt so much narrower than it had at 17.

Alex fully realized that, at some point, he was going to need to talk about all of this. He allowed himself to imagine a future, far from Walter Reed, where he could just make an appointment with a private psychologist, walk into a well-appointed office, and start spilling his guts. He imagined a calm but firm therapist assuring him that it wasn’t his fault his father hated him, and helping him work through all the myriad hurts of his life. There was so much he would need to talk about. The abuse. The self-loathing. The years he was forced in the closet under DADT. The intimacy issues. The combat. The leg. Michael. And, of course, the way that damn attack in the toolshed kept rising to the surface under the most inopportune circumstances. Like when he was trying to hang up a picture for a fellow Airman’s wife. Or trying to stick around after sex without having a panic attack. Or trying to fill out a standard psychological form, for chrissakes.

“Manes?”

Alex jerked his head up.

“I’m Dr. DiNardo, the psychologist. You can come on back.”

Yes, Alex knew he’d need to talk about things. But not today.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
